Goodness Knows
by i-lovedyoufirst
Summary: What is there to do when the one you've imprinted on wants nothing further to do with you?


I want to beg your forgiveness right off the bat for how _disgustingly _pathetic and out of character Jacob sounds. But, to me, pre-imprint Jacob and post-imprint Jacob are two very different people. What is there to do when the one you've imprinted on wants nothing further to do with you?

* * *

It was eleven o'clock in the morning of another day in the perfect life of Jacob Back. His alarm, a fairly new addition to his life, was going off loudly in his ear, but he woke up smiling. When he finally moved into the Cullen house, something that had been a long time coming, he had taken to setting it so as not to lose precious time with _her._ With his Nessie.

He saw no one in the brief walk from his bedroom door to hers, and wasted no time before beginning his day with her. "Morning, sleepyhead!" he called, throwing open the door and plopping down onto Nessie Cullen's large bed without ceremony. He breathed in her sweet scent, the very same that surrounded him each night in dreams and which he longed to be enveloped in every waking second. When she did not stir, he took a moment to observe her as she slept. She was a miracle, one he was thankful for every single day. She looked so small and delicate curled beneath her sheet, newly fourteen. Her teenage experience was coming with an attitude which Bella was having a difficult time dealing with, but that Jacob happened to love. Nessie was all fire, becoming more fierce and independent every single day.

He leaned in low, his face very close to hers, and brushed her eyelids with his lips in a gentle kiss that was far from sensual. After all, at only fourteen, Nessie was still very much a young girl. Things between them were beginning to change, however, and it would be a lie to say that he didn't love every second of it. Lately, things were different. Lately, when she snuggled into him, she moved with a bit more purpose. Lately, when she caught his eyes, she held them in a way that implied there could be—surely was—a serious crush forming in her young heart. And lately, he was beginning to crush right back. The very thought of it made him smile. A crush. It was strange sometimes, how the imprint allowed his emotions to evolve with hers. Strange, but wonderful. "Wake up, honey."

"Mmm," she moaned groggily, her brown eyes meeting his own as sleep fled. "Mmm. Jacob." Her eyes opened wider, the dewy, peaceful look fleeing from them as swiftly as sleep had. "Jacob? Jacob Black!"

"Of course it's Jacob Black, silly." He laughed, and pushed a few mussed strands of hair back from her face. "Now get out of bed! You can't sleep _all _day."

"Jacob Black," she said again. Her voice was cold this time, and he felt a hazy sense of panic he had long since forgotten begin to bloom in his breast. It was a vaguely familiar feeling, one that brought him back to a time when vampires were the enemy and love was a much more painful feeling. "Jacob Black, get away from me!"

"Wha—I'm sorry?"

"Jacob, I don't want you near me anymore." He balked.

"What are you talking about? What do you mean you don't want me _near_ you? Of course you do. I love you, silly!"

Her eyes bore into his, cold as ice, and she said, "That's disgusting." She let her words linger for a moment before sitting up, leaving him to stare at the imprint of her head on the pillow.

"Disgusting?" He spoke the word not to her, but to the vacated spot before his eyes. His tone was flat, disconnected. Her words would not register. "Nessie, where is this coming from? Did I do something wrong? Or say something that upset you? Because I told you, honey—I'll be anything you need me to be. If I'm doing something you don't like, just tell me. It's fine, honey. I love you."

"The way you loved my mother?" The words dropped from her lips like stones, smashing holes in his perfect world. He sat up and looked around desperately, as if trying to find a way around them. As if he was trapped.

"I'm sorry?" he said again, and it was not an apology.

"Daddy told me!" she said fiercely, gathering the blankets to her chin so that he could see nothing of her but her furious, betrayed expression. "Daddy _told_ me about you and Mom."

"Nessie, your mother and I—"

"You were in _love_ with her!" she shouted, tears beginning to well in her huge eyes. Jacob winced at the strength of her voice. One of his least favourite things about living with vampires was the inescapable lack of privacy. Even if Alice couldn't see either one of them, it was impossible for her—and for everyone else—not to hear them. _Especially_ at the volume Nessie was now yelling at.

Her knuckles whitened as her tiny fists held the blanket more tightly to her. "You were in _love_ with my mother! You _kissed_ her! You wanted to…you wanted to…" She could no longer find the words, and so settled for a cry of frustration.

"Nessie!" Jacob yelled, desperate to quiet her, wanting to reach for her but now knowing how. "Listen to me. I don't know _what_ Edward told you, but your mother and I…" He fell silent. There were a million words he could use, a thousand different ways for him to explain, but he couldn't tell which were truths, and which were lies.

"Did you love her?" Nessie asked directly, making it significantly easier and immeasurably more difficult to answer. Her eyes softened, but she held the blanket around her as tightly as ever.

"Nessie, I…"

_"Did you love her?"_

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes against the piercing glare of her own. There was no way to lie to her, he knew. Even if the line between fact and fiction were clearer, he would not have been capable of lying to her.

So he plunged forward, admitting to her the simplest answer. It was the _only_ thing he was sure of.

"Yeah, Nessie. Yeah, I guess I loved her."

"And did she love you?" Her voice was all fragility and nakedness, and the hands holding the sheet up like a shield dropped to the bed.

"Yeah. She loved me too." The words were heavy leaving his mouth. He couldn't help but think for a moment about how any other little girl would be enthralled by his story, by the love story of Jacob Black and Bella Swan. By their romance, doomed to failure before it even began. If it actually _had_ begun. There were those blurry lines again.

He thought ironically of how any other little girl who had been told the dysfunctional fairytale, as Nessie obviously had, would have rooted for him. Any other little girl would have loved the romance, the passion, the underdog, no pun intended. They would probably even have guiltily loved the villain, with his pale, chilled skin and his intense, amber eyes. The villain, with his false promises of amity and brotherhood, his promises that had sounded _so damn sincere, _but were nothing more than pretty lies. Edward Cullen.

Just like that, Jacob was pulled roughly from his reverie back into his spoiled reality.

"This is _wrong,_ Jacob," she said slowly, seeming to take no notice of the tears streaming down her face. Her words were cold and even and, for a moment, she was not Nessie, fourteen and angry. She was Bella, eighteen and explaining to him with a mended heart, his own handiwork, that she would choose Edward every time. No matter what. "Get away from me, Jacob."

"Nessie, you have to—you can't—Nessie, please—"

"Don't you _dare_ cry," she commanded when she heard the break in his voice. "Don't you _dare_ cry, because this is _your_ fault."

"How could it be?" he asked, hating the pathetic pleading in his words that he was powerless to stop. "How could I have known that, one day, I would have you? That I would love you?"

"Ha!" The laugh, short and lifeless, shot from her throat like a bullet and narrowly missed his heart. "You don't _love_ me! And I _certainly_ don't love you." She closed her eyes, and he knew that, at least for now, he would get no further. There was no arguing with her. She had her mother's tone of voice and her father's sense of pride, and there was just _no_ arguing with her.

So he left.


End file.
